Eight cops shot in botched UP raid

Kanpur, July 3

Eight police personnel, including a DSP, were gunned down in a village near the city by the henchmen of a criminal, who lost two of them in a firefight later, officials said on Friday.

Seven others, including a civilian, were injured in the attack from a rooftop on a police team after it entered Bikru village past Thursday midnight to arrest Vikas Dubey, a history-sheeter who faces about 60 criminal cases.

Before fleeing, the attackers took away weapons from the dead and the wounded policemen. The police then sealed the entire area and began a combing operation, which led to another encounter with Dubey’s men in Nivada village.

There, the police killed Prem Prakash and Atul Dubey and recovered a snatched pistol. IG (STF) Amitabh Yash claimed that the weapon used in the initial attack was a rifle seized from Dubey by the STF when they arrested him in Lucknow in 2017. Yogi Adityanath, CM, announced Rs 1 crore each for the families of slain cops. — PTI